


Farthest stars.

by orange_crushed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Future Fic, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 20:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2081490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is like them, but also, he isn't. Castiel knows this is a condition of perception, not an objective absolute. Dean's nervous system operates normally, Dean breathes and expels waste and snores, Dean is attracted to shiny objects like most of his species, Dean eats a lot of onions. Dean is mostly like other humans. Just not to Castiel. The creature that is Dean- the earthy sweating body without, and the luminous thing within- is not like anything else at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Farthest stars.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MajorEnglishEsquire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/gifts).



**_now._ **

Castiel is losing time.

Not time but Time, the ineffable inexhaustible thing which does not exist, but which nevertheless orders the living universe. He was once able to superposition himself so as to be conscious of happenings across the face of the planet, and now when he walks through a doorway he forgets why he entered the room.

"Babe?" Dean calls, from the kitchen. "You find the scissors?" _Ah_ , Castiel thinks, and goes to the drawer where they keep such things.

His mind drifts sometimes when he is waiting for the water to boil in the kettle, when he is folding clothes. He falls asleep in the middle of long movies. Dean says this is normal, Dean says that nobody knows how long it takes an egg to boil or an arm to get a sunburn, that those things just happen when you stop paying attention. It seems ridiculous- Castiel knows objectively that it takes approximately twelve minutes for an egg to reach his preferred texture, and that this has nothing to do with his level of focus- but it also seems, at least from observation, to be true. Time passes just as it pleases: it drags or slips away unnoticed, it stretches. Sometimes when he is lying with his head against Dean's shoulder, watching the credits roll as his eyes drift shut, there is a moment. A moment where nothing exists, where time is irrelevant: where his heart slows, his hands go loose where they are twined together. This is the place that Castiel goes when the world is cold and strange. Sometimes the world is a screen that he feels he is disappearing behind, bit by bit. Other times the world is real and he is false, a mirage that should have melted when heaven's doors closed. When that happens this is where he comes, back to the axis, the human pivot on which Castiel's human world spins. Dean is getting older, there are grey hairs at his temples. "I'm rusting," Dean says. Castiel has caught him looking at boxes of _Just for Men_ , as if there was something wrong with the evidence of his prolonged existence, as if there were any cosmetic solutions which could improve upon what Dean is: the impressed handprint of a God who longed for beauty. "Christ," Dean says, when Castiel tells him this, in front of the conditioner. But his eyes are softening, pleased. He fumbles a bottle of shampoo into their basket and leaves the dyes alone.

Sometimes Castiel wonders if this isn't the answer, the secret piece that he keeps misplacing. If he has left time behind, perhaps it's because he has no more need of it. The light from foreign stars is still shining after their collapse: they cannot mourn themselves. Castiel has seen the future and the past, a thousand presents, a million causal chains. There are ways he might have stayed the way he was, ways the world might have ended even as he endured beyond it. But here, now, Dean is bringing in homemade ice cream. "Budge over," he says, and Castiel does. Dean puts a cold bowl into Castiel's hands, and Castiel plucks the spoon out and licks it clean. "Good?" he asks, glowing.

"Wonderful," says Castiel.

 

 

 

 

**_then._ **

Dean is trying to tear off a piece of duct tape with his teeth, unsuccessfully. He's swearing and holding together the broken back of his flashlight, spitting out little bits of tape. He's cut his finger on the cracked casing already and it's only making things more awkward. Castiel is watching him, from inside the place where Castiel goes when he doesn't wish to be seen. The skin over the world is thin, and there are many points to pass through it, the way that light falls through a windowpane, or water through cloth. Castiel doesn't feel like water or light: he feels uncomfortably like an interloper, like a shadow passing in front of the sun.

"Motherfucker," Dean says. Castiel thinks about helping: about appearing with a new flashlight, something sturdy and well-fashioned with a thing called a lifetime guarantee, though this is a vague term as he understands it: Dean has died once already. This is not the kind of issue human retailers are prepared to deal with. Dean finally gets a piece of tape loose and secures it around the end, keeping the batteries inside and pressed against the circuit. He clicks the button on and off. The light hits the opposite wall in a faint circle, and then fades to nothing, making a miniature sunset against the wallpaper. "Piece of shit," Dean says, and throws the broken flashlight in the direction of the garbage can.

"You missed," Castiel says, but Dean can't hear him, can't see him, doesn't sense him at all.

He does this more and more, for reasons which are still undefined as clouds. He has concrete excuses: the apocalypse is looming, the angels anxious and combative whenever they meet. Dean is reckless with himself to an alarming degree, and Sam barely less. These are good, solid arguments, but he isn't so unconscious as to mistake them for motivations, for the source of this tugging, insistent, ceaseless impulse. He knows he wants something. More and more he simply wants this: wants to watch Dean fix broken things, put a plastic band-aid over one finger and turn the television on, to lie back against the headboard. He wants to stand here while Dean talks out loud to the characters on _Una Vida Apasionada_ about their mistakes.

"Jesus, dude," Dean says, to a man stoically crying on a balcony, turning his face up to the camera while a single fat tear rolls down one cheek. "Can't you see she's lying to you?"

It doesn't feel like this with other people. He often walks in cities now, in towns and forests, he often takes himself to where things are living, to see them do so. He watches flowers, insects, crowds of people massing in the street. He's always watched, but now he's so much closer: so much more like them, sometimes, increasingly, in ways he doesn't dwell on. He stands outside of diners when Sam and Dean are inside, and watches the way that people park their cars, carefully or carelessly, the songs they let finish before they turn their engines off. In their countless minute differences Castiel is touched by their sameness, the shared confusion of their humanity. Dean is like them, but also, he isn't. Castiel knows this is a condition of perception, not an objective absolute. Dean's nervous system operates normally, Dean breathes and expels waste and snores, Dean is attracted to shiny objects like most of his species, Dean eats a lot of onions. Dean is mostly like other humans. Just not to Castiel. The creature that is Dean- the earthy sweating body without, and the luminous thing within- is not like anything else at all.

Dean turns the television off in disgust and tosses the remote onto the bed. He lies there and stares up at the ceiling for a second, and Castiel watches his face: the skin around his mouth that folds when he smiles or frowns, the lashes that curve against his cheek when his eyes close for a fraction of a second. Dean rubs one hand over his forehead and then he stills and says,

"Cas," softly, once. Castiel holds perfectly still. He doesn't have a heart in the conventional sense but he knows it would be racing, he knows that the fine hairs on his skin would stand on end. It isn't possible that Dean has seen him. It can't be. "Cas," Dean says, more firmly, to the empty space above him. "Hey," he starts, and then he sighs and puts both hands over his face and says, "forget it," out loud to himself, and he rolls over onto his side.

Castiel puts his hand out, until it is almost touching Dean's shoulder, until the flat of his borrowed palm is almost resting on the flannel sleeve, on the warm muscle and skin below that.

"I'm here," he says. He doesn't know why.

 

 

 

 

**_before._ **

Inside the young and yellow sun there is a thing with many faces, a mind which calculates the pieces in motion around it: a fern of light which unfolds in slow curls as the skin of the star boils and churns. Plasma runs through and around it, rivers of light in a soundless roar. Inside the sun is endless day, and outside endless night. These things have no meaning, except the meaning of their difference: in the silent dark between stars there is an absence which is peace itself, and inside the stars a burning spark of action and reaction. To move between them, to breach the surface and sail outward with magnetic thrust, is to be one with the atoms which are forming into particles, the particles into dust. All around is potential, all is possibility. To sit inside the star is so much like being formed: like resting once again inside the mind of God.

Soon, perhaps, the others will come and gather. Castiel is not alone: it is one of many and yet they are inside it too, as it is inside this orb of nuclear birth. They will come again and all will go together into the presence, to be absorbed and taught. This is all that there is, and all that there should be.

And, yet.

Castiel watches as a flare rises on the surface, tugged by unseen force outward, to spill heat into the dark. Through an atom of hydrogen Castiel sees a pointed peak of brightness, a crystalline shape refracted. It is merely a trick of bending light: light is playful as the Maker, and has nearly as many aspects. Castiel is still learning light, but this one is unfamiliar. Against the clear and vast darkness it seems almost to have form and weight, to exist, for the briefest moment, and then it is sparkling and gone. But Castiel's memory is perfect, and the imprint of memory is perfectly made. Castiel sees it clearly. A wave of understanding passes through and around: a sense that this has been put before Castiel for contemplation. Castiel has been made aware of time. This is not all that there should be, all that is intended. Nothing is finished, but only beginning, again and again and again. There will be a new thing. Shimmering and beautiful, fleeting, fresh: a thing that is not made as Castiel was made, a thing that doesn't last. There is only one reaction for such a revelation: joy. And Castiel feels it wholly.

Castiel wonders. Castiel waits.

 

 

.


End file.
